Why do I want to post my preprints, notes, and codes in public?

Because I believe it will promote the development of CFD research and education.

There are people who do not have access to journals. If not impossible, it takes time, money, and an effort to get the paper they get interested in. The lag it causes, I think, impedes rapid progress in research and education. At least, I want to make my preprints available to those who come to my website and get interested. Publishers allow authors to post preprints in public websites:

Authors’ Rights & Responsibilities (Elsevier) –
https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/55654/AuthorUserRights.pdf

If people really find it interesting and can get the journal version, they will get it. To those who think their research do not receive attention as much as they should, I recommend that they post the preprints and/or place links to the journal versions in thier websites. There are people who come across your website, get interested in papers in the list of publications, but couldn’t really get the papers, and give up or just forget it.

I have notes and ideas that have never been promoted to research papers for a long time. If I just don’t have time to work on them, I’ll keep them until I find time. But I don’t think that keeping stale notes or stalled ideas for a long time is productive. I’d share them with anyone who might find them interesting and think they can do something about them. Also, I would post notes I wrote in understanding other methods and ideas in CFD. These notes are just personal notes and cannot be research papers, but people may find them useful. [My CFD notes are posted at http://www.cfdnotes.com .]

I would post my codes that I think are useful (http://cfdbooks.com/cfdcodes.html and at researchgate ). The code that generates grids and the exact solution to Ringleb’s flow is useful.

Ringleb’s Flow Code (grid generation and exact solution): http://www.cfdbooks.com/cfdcodes/ringleb_v1.f90

This solution has been used by many researchers, but the solution method has always been unexplained. It should be possible for anyone to write a code, but it takes time and effort and they often won’t/can’t do. So, I posted my code. Some people have used it for accuracy study and published papers with the results. Some people wonder how unstructured CFD codes are written. I provide codes where they can see how the unstructured grid data are generated and stored. Some people want to know how to write a 1D shock tube code. I provide an example. I know it is so basic in a particular field, but not necessarily in others. I try hard to make the code simple enough to understand the algorithms. If it is hard to understand, it won’t be instructive and won’t serve their intended purpose. The codes do not need to be efficient and elegant. Once you understand what is going on, you would probably want to write a better one by yourself. At that moment, my code has served its purpose.

You might want to ask me “Why then do you sell your book rather than post it in public?”. I think that a book is different from research papers, notes, and educational codes. I wanted to know its value. If no one finds it worth even $9.99 after browsing the preview, it will prove to have no value.

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